The lost art of snail mail

A common enough question in the course of my workday as a college mailman. Asked by the old and the young alike, but mostly the young. And I am generally in a well enough mood to reply Yes, I certainly can help you, even if I am generally not in a well enough mood to be excited about the prospect. Because if there is one thing I’ve learned in my long and storied career of postal delivery to a bunch of 18-21 year-olds, it’s that they often need a lot of help. A LOT.

So, just a bit ago—“Can you help me?”

Yes.

Young lady, nineteen-ish. I pegged her as a junior. Not because I knew anything at all about her, but because I’ve been here long enough to be able to guess such things with a modicum of accuracy. It was the way she dressed—pajama bottoms and a raggedy sweatshirt, which told me she’d been here long enough to not care anymore but no so long that she understood it just may be time to start growing up a little—and the way she addressed me—in the eye. She’d laid the envelope, pen, and stamp on the counter in front of her. When I walked up, she was staring at all three as if they were all pieces to some exotic puzzle.

I asked what sort of help she needed, which could have been anything from needing a zip code to how much postage was needed to mail something to China. But no, neither of those.

Instead, she said, “I don’t know how to mail this.”

“Just fill it out,” I told her. “I’ll mail it for you when you’re done.”

“No. I mean, I don’t know . . . how.”

“How to what?”

“You know. Like, fill this out.”

She pointed to the envelope and stared at it. I stared at it, too. Because I had no idea what she was talking about.

“You mean,” I asked, “you don’t know how to address an envelope?”

“No.”

“You mean, No, that’s not it? Or do you mean, No, I don’t know how to address an envelope?”

Now she looked at me. Her brow scrunched. I got the image of her seated in some classroom desk, trying to split the atom.

“I don’t know how to address an envelope,” she said.

I’ll be honest—it took me a while. Not to show her how to address an envelope (which, as it turned out, took much, much longer than a while, took what felt like an eternity), but for what this young woman told me to finally sink in. She really didn’t know how to address an envelope. Had no idea where to put the stamp, where to write her home address (it was a card, she said, to her mother) and not only where to write the return address, but what a return address was.

Nineteen years old. Junior in college. I can assume this young lady was bright, or else she wouldn’t be in college. And resourceful. And driven. Capable, too—she whipped out her iPhone and danced through so many apps to find her mother’s address that it nearly gave me a seizure. But when it came to something as commonplace as sending a letter? Nothing.

“Nobody sends letters anymore,” she told me. “It’s so 1800s.”

She finished her envelope and affixed the stamp (after being told where that went, too). I had to sit down for a bit afterward. My head was killing me.

Now I’m thinking:

Is this really where we’ve come? Have we really raised a generation of children who are so dependent upon technology that anything without a button is an unsolvable mystery?

But there’s something more as well, something far worse. In our instant world of texts and emails and Facebook posts and tweets, that poor girl has missed out on one of the true pleasures of life. She has never sat at a quiet desk with paper and pen to write a letter. She has never pondered over the words that have leaked through her hand and fingers, never slowed enough to find the rhythm of her words and her heart. She has never felt the trepidation of folding those words (and her heart) into thirds and stuffing them in an envelope sealed with her own saliva—her own DNA—and placing it in a mailbox. Never worried that her letter maybe wouldn’t get to where it was meant to go. Never felt the exhilaration of finding a sealed reply waiting for her days or weeks later.

Give me the new, the world says. Give me the shiny and the bright. I say take it. I’ll keep my paper and pen.

Comments

YES!!!!!! i miss getting meaningful snailmail! To receive something hand-written is so much more personal. It means the person had to take time too write it in their own hand. Not tap it out in a few seconds and hit send.
In so many schools children are no longer taught cursive. Think about that for a moment… what are all the original founding documents and other important dicuments housed in the National Archives written in? I have a family member who is a senior in High School who cannot read cursive. We will soon have an entire generation who will not be able to read the Declaration of Independance or their Constitution as it was written by our founding fathers. Scary huh?
(Sorry for writing a book here…)

Billy, If I didn’t know you, wasn’t certain that you’re almost constitutionally unable to stretch the truth, I’d smile and think this was a joke. I may be behind the curve with technology, but this young lady is out of touch with the reality of history. Sure, I don’t stick my arm out the window to signal turns anymore, and I know that the dimmer switch on my car is no longer a little button on the left floorboard to be depressed, but I haven’t jumped so far ahead in adopting modern advances that I’d be unable to drive a stick shift car. Wow, didn’t know how to address a letter.
Thanks for sharing.

Oh my, sir. YES. I was just talking about this with a friend. About how you can hold something written by a longtime resident of heaven, and still feel a connection to them not quite like any other. Their hand and your hand defy time and are in the same place at the same time. Exquisite, the art is, and poised on the precipice of loss. I can’t even stand to think about it.

In a world where the only mail you get is junk and the price of sending continues to climb and where my words most assuredly do not improve when I scrawl them out by hand, I simply don’t see the appeal of sending letters. Now, I’m old enough to have lived in a time when email and texting did not exist. But even then, when not doing so left me is desolate isolation, I felt zero compulsion. Maybe it’s my poor penmanship. Perhaps it’s that spelling and me don’t get along so well. Or the blank page may simply be so daunting to mar that I just can’t bring myself to do so (never been able to mark one of my uber-awesome Moleskins because of this dread).

Oh, I get it. Letters from friends were a ton of fun back in the day, especially if it was a pretty girl you hadn’t seen a long while who sent you a photo as proof of life and her lovely looping letters accentuated with hearts and smiles glittered on the paper. Those were fun. And I’ve kept some. But I rarely, if ever, go back to look again. They’re like all the comments in my yearbook, precious to me in a way but tucked away. Or emails. Or saved chat logs.

I don’t wax-nostalgic about the lost art of making shoes, though I’m sure cobblers watched their dying art with similar mourning. Technology enables us to do things differently, but communicate we still do. Perhaps not in the same way. Like the illuminated texts we no longer produce, the ancient art can be marveled at, but I’m happy with the searchable, commentary-linked Bible I have on my phone.

What a sad, sad story this is. I still treasure hand-written notes from friends and family members long gone to Heaven; I feel so connected to them even now. And as far as the comment by the young man above – well, I won’t even go there, because his attitude is part of how and why we’ve reached this point. Please, Billy, keep on writing. I learn from so many of your posts. Thank you for what you do!

Trackbacks

[…] I’ll be honest—it took me a while. Not to show her how to address an envelope (which, as it turned out, took much, much longer than a while, took what felt like an eternity), but for what this young woman told me to finally sink in. She really didn’t know how to address an envelope. […]